Ringer

The studies tend to be more inconclusive than most give credit. Here are a few and an article above publication bias; http://www.tamiu.edu/~cferguson/MVJPED.pdf http://www.apa.org/monitor/2010/12/virtual-violence.aspx http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/faculty/caa/abstracts/2000-2004/01ab.pdf http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110420164422.htm On the mention if Tom and Jerry playful type violence or realistic violence would be more prone to cause violence I would say the best way to check off-hand without a study is look at the place the cartoons originated and their crime rates. Anime violence tends to be incredibly more realistically violent, in the blood and gore sense, than the US's cartoon violence (Since I'm from the states I don't know what kind of cartoons are played in Europe). Now the violent crime rate in Japan and other Asian countries pales in comparison with the violent crime rate in the states. But then again there are tons of other factors that would need to be introduced, but the same can be said when saying media/game/cartoon violence = real violence.

My zoology professor liked to take us on nature walks, he was an ichthyologist so we were at lakes a lot, and have us identify different animals and see what animals were related and the like. If you are allowed to just take your kids outside for a minute you can find dozens of different animals. If you want to focus on stuff like evolution a fun game is making up animals and talking about what environment they may have lived in, how they could have evolved that way, etc.

Depend on what you mean by simple. Some animals like the hydra only have a kind of nerve net that serves as their nervous system. So it has neurons but doesn't have any sort of brain.

So your above statement doesn't make sense?

Really depends on what kind of work I'm doing and what mood I'm in; Somewhat calm and flowing type thought - Jeff Beck, Jaco Pastorius, Jethro Tull, etc. More intense - Protest the Hero, Iron Maiden, old Avenged Sevenfold (Waking the Fallen & Sounding the Seventh Trumpet), Refused, Trivium, etc. Just something different - Mindless Self Indulgence, Coheed and Cambria, Cynic, etc.

But the point of teaching something in school is to help children to develop useful skills that they will be able to use later in their life. While I agree that it is interesting to learn languages that aren't really that necessary, it isn't the purpose of school to teach this. If your culture teaches a language not in common usage that is great, but that is not what I would expect my child to learn in school. If you wish to learn a language like that on your own there are things out there to help you, but I don't think we should train educators to teach something that is of virtually no use other than it's interesting.

My uncle speaks Cherokee very well, but that doesn't help him in any way to be a more productive citizen or give him an edge in employers eyes. It's interesting, but other than that its not useful. Other languages can be much more useful, even Latin though it's a dead language. If that kind of language is your heritage and you wish to learn it good for you, but to force it upon people isn't what I would think school is for. Would it make Native Americans happy? Would it make African Americans happy to make children learn, say, a Bantu language? No, first it doesn't make up for what was done to them in any way shape or form. Second, if you were to choose a language you are singling out a single tribe as more important to native history. That would probably cause most to be more angry than happy. The difference between learning Spanish and a native language is that Spanish is still spoken throughout the world regularly. It's a useful language to learn even if you don't study languages.

Everyone knew the Earth was round. They knew it was round in the BCEs, they didn't really forget. The argument was about the size of the Earth not the shape. Other than that, I already said I think I was mistaken, I know the story. What I was saying is that I believed I had read something saying this was not the case. I couldn't find anything upon searching, so I said I was mistaken. Wouldn't it be more respectful just to learn the history? How would you propose what languages to learn. There were hundreds of different tribes with different languages, which very few people know well enough to teach. Also, as Bruce said, making this mandatory would waste time when they could be learning a different language.

Actually I don't think India was a country when the Americas were founded. Also there is no Chinese language, the reason the different languages in China are considered the same is because they can communicate through writing. But on that forcing people to learn the native languages would be as pointless as making all English speaking people Old English. Maybe less so just for that fact people could realize English is Germanic and not a Romance language (that's more of a pet peeve though). Something to add to the list though, I think student should get a basic understanding of statistics. If you have ever had an argument with someone quoting statistics that doesn't understand what they're saying you know what I mean. [edit] Looking for etymology on Indian because it was bothering me, I can't find anything except that explorers did think they were in India. I don't remember where I read that this was a misconception. [/edit]

Yes; although America doesn't have a national language, as far as I'm aware this is illegal for some reason, Spanish is a foreign language. As are the native languages that were here before English. Spanish is the second most common language it is different, foreign in this sense, than what most people in America have generally accepted as the common language. Foreign language doesn't necessarily mean from somewhere else, it is also used as 'not the common language'.

I don't think you are phrasing your question very well. American English is a dialect of English just like European English is a dialect. There are different dialects within those dialects like the southern dialect in America. But you have to understand that the gap between a dialect and a language is very arbitrary. A well used saying in linguistics is 'a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.'

At first I thought this was a raptor party and was really excited. Less so now.

Your university's library website should have somewhere you can look up journal articles online for free.

And I have yet to meet you, does that mean you do not exist? There are Billions of people you haven't met. Santa will not bring you toys if you misbehave, that is more fearful than something that will happen after death to most children. I know of virtually no religious leader who demands everything in the bible is exact and correct. Just because the ones who do are more newsworthy and loud does not mean they are in the majority. And many teachers in the early levels believe this model to be correct. How so? Who is to say those are his plays? Did you see him write them? There is argument over if it was him who wrote them. Even if he did, I was making a hypothetical situation that you disregard. Obviously you missed the point that I was pointing out your hypocrisy in that you ridicule others for trying to understand something you act as if you understand. A god of the gaps theory is idiocy. If you find nothing wrong with it I don't see how you can have any discussion on theology. I'm not sure what you mean by your limiting theological thought. A god of the gaps theory states god is interacting where our knowledge is lacking, aka what we don't understand is god. This idea is dumb because it implies things we know don't involve god, and things we don't know we won't know because we can't know god. The point I was making was that Christians believe EVERYTHING is gods miracle even if they don't believe in magic.

You realize you do exactly what you ask others not to do in this. How do you know what god any of us believe in? Some Jews do believe the OT in a literal manner, just as most Christians don't. Do you think its strange and immoral to teach children about the tooth fairy, Santa Clause, the Easter bunny, etc. Further more do you think it's immoral to teach children the planetary-model of the atom because it's not strictly correct? I wouldn't say so because using that model can be useful just as the teaching of theology can be useful. If your Shakespeare did not write all of the plays with him as the author, is there any reason to think there was ever a Shakespeare? As was said before, the god of the OT is unfathomable and by trying to understand it you are doing the same thing you ridicule others for doing. This is a god of the gaps theory and is useless for any real theological thought. Most who believe in god would say that existence is God's miracle so the need for fantasy and magic is null.

Yes if the Earth were to spin faster we may fly off if we couldn't keep up with the change in direction, but it still wouldn't affect our gravity.

Actually there are many different IQ test that test for different things and developed for different purposes. None of which follow your description or history. Here's some information. Not to mention our education system is was not designed to prepare someone for military nor are its curricula determined by the military.

Humans haven't evolved from chimpanzees anymore than chimpanzees evolved from humans. Both are a misunderstanding of evolution, one modern species doesn't evolved from another modern species, they come from a common ancestor. No one says evolution always have to be positive, except those anti-evolution people who think that for evolution to be true it must be linear and progressive, but only that there must be change over time. No one can prove it because it is not true, there are plenty of traits that could be considered neutral or negative in one situation that help in another, and it is in that way that natural selection can take place.

I came from a small school so these might be in schools and mine just didn't offer them, but I would like to see some sort of integration programs. How mathematics and science have been involved with literature and art (like through the looking glass) and vice versa. I also dislike how the science and math classes I was involved in less on memorizing and more on how and why things work the way they do. Then there's the whole standardized testing crap that could be scrapped. I think something else that is important is the low pay of teachers. For as little as they are paid they are some of the most integral people in the development of children. They also tend to put in ridiculous hours to put together lesson plans, grading, extracurriculars, etc. Not to mention they have to put up with a lot of little brats all day.

Marat are you sure these people weren't suffering from a different disorder? There are many other disorders that cause people to do damage to themselves, even some that cause an addiction to the harm. What you are describing sounds like some sort of self-mutilation disorder which can be co-morbid with a list of different disorders.

If we were only related to chimpanzees that may have some sort of validity, but, alas, that isn't the case. We are related to all primates, who are related to all mice, who are related to all mammals, ad infinitum. And could you explain what you mean by human's being the last apparition? I take it to mean that humans are the last species to evolve, which is very obviously not the case. Horses are technically more modern than humans, I think the modern horse evolved ~10,000 thousand years ago while humans ~50,000 years ago.

Despite what some idealistic anthropologists like to claim all societies have social taboos and are not absolutely promiscuous. How so? I'm sure everyone knows many more academics and scientists who were just as productive with there sexuality intact. This I agree to wholeheartedly

Although it would be difficult due to different schedules and everything you could probably do something like this on irc just for the real time interaction

But imprisoning also takes away the same member of society, but for a longer period. Not to mention it allows a deviant to intermingle with other deviants and find out how to better commit crimes. For the most part there is no 'perfect' answer to deviance.

Did you really just ask what something is the say that you don't see the evidence for their existence in grey matter?